About the Author

Benjamin R. Barber is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Demos, as well as president and director of the international NGO CivWorld at Demos and its annual Interdependence Day event. An internationally renowned political theorist, Dr. Barber brings an abiding concern for democracy and citizenship to issues of politics, culture and education in America and abroad. He consults regularly with political and civic leaders in the United States and around the world.

Barber's honors include a knighthood (Palmes Academiques/Chevalier) from the French Government (2001), the Berlin Prize of the American Academy of Berlin (2001) and the John Dewey Award (2003). He has also been awarded Guggenheim, Fulbright and Social Science Research Fellowships, honorary doctorates from Grinnell College, Monmouth University and Connecticut College and has held the chair of American Civilization at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes in Paris.

He writes frequently for Harper's Magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, The American Prospect, Le Nouvel Observateur, Die Zeit, La Repubblica, El Pais and many other scholarly and popular publications in America and Europe. He was a founding editor and for 10 years editor-in-chief of the distinguished international quarterly Political Theory. He holds a certificate from the London School of Economics and Political Science and an M.A. and Doctorate from Harvard University.

About this Book

"As soon as you hear the conceit of this book--that there are two great opposing forces at work in the world today, border-crossing capitalism and splintering factionalism, and that they are the two biggest threats to democracy--you know it rings true enough to be worth reading. Although capitalism could have only grown to current levels in the soil of democracies, Benjamin Barber argues that global capitalism now tends to work against the very concept of citizenship, of people thinking for themselves and with their neighbors. Too often now, how we think is the product of a transnational corporation (increasingly, a media corporation) with headquarters elsewhere. And although self-determination is one of the most fundamental of democratic principles, unchecked it has led to a tribalism (think Bosnia, think Rwanda) in which virtually no one besides the local power elite gets a fair shake. The antidote, Barber concludes, is to work everywhere to resuscitate the non-governmental, non-business spaces in life--he calls them 'civic spaces' (such as the village green, voluntary associations of every sort, churches, community schools)--where true citizenship thrives." -Amazon.com review